May 2021 Newsletter
SEL conversations in LATAM during COVID-19
A region that must be empowered.
From Your Editor-of-the-Month
Patricia Vazquez
Welcome to the May edition of the Karanga newsletter!
My heart is full of happiness to bring you all a little taste of the talent and knowledge that Latin America has to give to the rest of the world.
It has been a pleasure to collect wonderful insights and thoughts, from my colleagues Ana María, Emiliana, Cecilia, members of Karanga, and Harvey a guest in this space who is bringing data into the conversation. They all are recognized and well known professionals in the region and they have written reflections on data, experiences, and challenges that LATAM has been going through the pandemic. But also, they bring us some reflections as the SEL agenda is not yet a priority on the public agendas. Civil society and many organizations have been promoting, advocating, and implementing SEL projects and programs into the educational systems.
There is always room for improvement, but now is the time of recognizing and building partnerships. The educational agenda, needs to bring all the capacities, but also all the possibilities. We need more than ever to work together. But we need more than ever to bring other international voices into the region.
This is an open invitation to join the reflection of SEL in LATAM. I hope you enjoy each one of the texts and looking forward to keep up building a profound SEL reflection in this region. This is the moment for a great alliance.
Best always,
Paty
Redesigning collaboration strategies to enhance SEL
by Ana María Raad
Latin America is one of the most affected regions in terms of learning and inequality gaps. Technology (or lack of it) showed us, once again, that we need more than ever to focus on education transformation, where socio-emotional skills are central. It is urgent to accelerate a transformation around “what” and “how” we learn. Latin America has demonstrated in this crisis, caused by the pandemic, not only the capacity for resilience or empathy, but also its ability to work collaboratively and scaling the foundations of a new and integral educational paradigm.
Digital educational solutions with meaning and heart
Schools’ closures at the beginning of 2020 put us at the crossroads of how to continue supporting the learning process of millions of children and young people in the region. However, very shortly we realized socio-emotional skills were at the center of this regional challenge and that we needed a new way of understanding collaboration, in a more agile way, without borders, based on trust and the highest quality standard to make an adequate impact.
This is how www.aprendoencasa.org was born, as a digital learning ecosystem with great synergy between 70 organizations in 7 countries, from diverse areas such as education, technology, arts, etc. Through this effort we permanently share resources and strategies of great quality and relevance for families and educators in the region. Together with leading organizations from the region, we are putting together collections of resources around socio-emotional learning such as UNICEF, whose focus was prevention during the pandemic, Atentamente from Mexico, that supports adults to understand their emotions in such critical moments, Educación 2020from Chile whose series developed together with CASEL are supporting teachers and principals, Casa Grande from Ecuador whose focus was stimulation and early childhood emotions, or Museo Moderno of Argentina and NUBE Foundation of Chile, who through art also support emotions. A hub or learning ecosystem for socio-emotional education, that has been adopted and scaled up by various governments, such as the Chilean Ministry of Education, through its site Descubramos en Casa, or the Ministry in Ecuador, making a real public-private collaboration.
Along this path of providing a timely response to the needs of thousands of children, youth, families and schools in the region, we wanted to ensure that the socio-emotional dimension of learning had a comprehensive and a multi-dimensional approach. For that reason, we have prioritized supporting the recognition of emotions through digital resources such as the book "How do you feel? or “¿Cómo te sientes?” " which through reading, allows children to deepen their emotional state. In addition, we know teachers´ biggest concern at this time is the emotional state of their students, followed by their own. This is why we have prioritized resources and strategies to work in classes with teachers and students, as is the case with the materials shared by Education 2020 through its guides for teachers, principals, and members of the school community named: "Socio-Emotional Learning or “Aprendizaje Socioemocional”". We also know that this dimension requires involvement and greater support from the home, the family. This is why another of the focuses has been to promote activities and games to develop as a family such as the ones shared by UNICEF "Box of feelings or “Caja de sentimientos”" that allow them to take advantage of spaces for entertainment and distraction.
In the long run, society will be marked by the need to close gaps and accelerate changes. For which, we must continue working in an articulated, collaborative way, to achieve significant and scalable changes. The pandemic allowed us to highlight and prioritize socio-emotional learning as pillars of education and therefore we need to amplify efforts and redesign the ways in which we collaborate to ensure better development and greater inclusion.
Ana Maria is a social communicator and Master in Anthropology and Social Development with studies in Ecuador, Chile and the United States. With more than 15 years of experience in social innovation, education and culture. She is the founder of the REimagina Foundation, which promotes innovation in education and culture. Additionally, she is the director of the AprendoEnCasa.org initiative developed in conjunction with the Harvard regional office in Chile and Ashoka. She is a strategic advisor to educational and cultural organizations. Previously, she served as Manager of the Center for Innovation in Education of Fundación Chile (2013-2018) and Director of Technologies for Education of the EducarChile portal of Fundación Chile / Mineduc (2010-2013). She also serves as director and advisor to the Chile-US Council for Science, Technology and Innovation. He is a member of the board of Ashoka Chile. Counselor of the Casa Grande University in Ecuador and of the Visual Arts Advisory Council of the Antenna Foundation in Chile. She was also Development Director of the CDI Foundation in Brazil for Ecuador and Chile.
Design with Purpose for the Early Years
by Cecilia de la Paz
The impact of geographic isolation which the planet is experiencing today is an inherent reality in all rural schools in the world. However, whether the incidence of distance turns intellectual isolation into a gap in access to opportunities varies from region to region. In Uruguay, rural schools obtain the lowest academic results and 70% of the students will not complete the basic cycle of education (3rd year of secondary school). The situation in the rest of Latin America is not very encouraging, being the continent whose countries are located in the lowest echelons according to PISA (OECD 2015-2016).
However, the global crisis we are going through brings the potential for development. The world finds it an emergency to consider the consequences of isolation, representing a unique opportunity to find solutions together. In this context of fragile economies, technology has always been a promising solution to reverse negative learning outcomes to cost efficient scalability. And while educational transformation is a pending innovation in the region, the pandemic is an excellent opportunity for technology to show its contribution to change in all its glory.
At Edúcate Uruguay we haven been working since 2009 to reverse these statistics and demonstrate that rural schools are a space for innovation and the meeting of sustainable and scalable technological-educational solutions. Educators and specialists from around the world have joined this mission and since 2019 Microsoft LATAM allows us to experiment and generate remote communities through its Teams platform. 2020 was the year to apply all our knowledge and understanding to the test.
Did the world stop in order to move forward?
Our objective since the beginning of the pandemic was to turn the challenge of isolation into an opportunity to transform the perspective of the use of technology. If we succeeded, its effects would benefit rural teachers far beyond the current crisis. We guide the actions through an ecosystem of change that leads the effective practices of the teachers in the different areas of knowledge and skill development. Sending materials every two months to put these strategies into practice both in person and remotely. Ecosystem of Teaching Learning Educate Uruguay.
Materials reception day. La Brújula Project - Educate Uruguay
In order to make an impact we had to offer stability, be dynamic, purposeful, relevant and especially empathetic. Our entire program had to be rescheduled to match the requirements that the system demanded of the schools. As a result, we strengthened communication channels with surveys, network groups, and telephone calls. We tripled the meeting instances and we integrated practicing teachers to our team to get to know what the teachers and children are going through.
Technology played an essential role in this Action Plan by integrating it considering the infrastructure, but especially the socio-economic and socio-cultural reality of those who were using it. By this we mean that our approach did not focus solely on instrumental knowledge of the environment but on the development of the link between technology and people which as Helsper says, “the motivation for using technologies and the structural and interpersonal relationships where they are integrated”.
To generate these links, we adopted a case study methodology that accompanied this need for dialogue, puting the work of the teacher and the progress of the children at the center of the analysis. While, it was complemented with theoretical background and practical tools to implement improvements. For this meeting each teacher or teachers present an image that reflects what has worked from the project. In the aspect that focused on making a comment as a reflection, recommending to their colleagues how to use that resource or strategy.
Photograph of the last Meeting of Knowledge between teachers where the main topics discussed are the links to communication and conversation about learning. Also addressed was peer feedback, motivation, habits and formative assessments.
The result was 95% participation, in five times more workshops and Educate meetings than those who attended prior to the pandemic. We consider that the high level of acceptance and impact on learning came from addressing issues related to the reality that was being lived. Offering a humanistic view, but from a deeply professional commitment not to let the pandemic affect the future lives of children in rural areas.
The rural teachers were under the eye of the entire Uruguayan society when activities reopened, since they were the first to return to the classrooms, and we are satisfied to know that many of the resources provided by Educate were useful for the mixed work model they had to face.
We would like to share some experiences from the teachers with whom we went through this challenge with.
Photo of the reopening of activities with materials for creativity and writing habits.
The Compass Project – Edúcate Uruguay
Creating an opportunity from a challenge
Crises can be an opportunity for positive change or reversal. We do not know what the future of education will be, but what we do know is that it will depend on the training and the tools that those who will guide the next generations to build will have. My hypothesis is that if we want to impact equity in education, we must focus on human relationships and the view that underlies the design of new learning ecosystems so that new generations and their mentors can expand and advance. If we integrate technology with the correct and rational role into the equation, we can deepen and scale its positive effect, overcoming the difficult contexts as those we have in Latin America.
How? That's the question that we invite everyone to continue answering, together.
Cecilia de la Paz has a Master in Communication and Electronic Media with more than 15 years of experience in the development of education projects. She is the founder of Fundación Educate Uruguay. He was Cluster Lead of the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning project and Head of Special Projects for Plan CEIBAL for 7 years. Currently, she is part of NPDL Global, participates as an advisor for referents of the Uruguayan government and as a mentor for technology entrepreneurship and education for StartUp Chile. Currently, she is a member of Vital Voices that empowers women in LATAM and the world and also part of the Karanga Advisory Council.
References:
Bariko Alessandro. 2018. The Game.
Cobo C. 2016. The Pending Innovation.
Hellen Hesper. 2019. Digital Socio Ecologies: The relationship between social and digital vulnerability.
Integrate Socio-emotional Education into the school culture in Mexico
by Emiliana Rodriguez
If you could summarize in one word what is your greatest wish and what you wish for all the girls and boys in the world, what word would you choose? In Mexico, the most popular words answered by teachers of all educational levels are well-being, love, justice, equality, peace and learning. Probably, anywhere in the world we connect with those desires. Who wouldn't want all children to feel happy and whole? That they could live in safe and peaceful environments, and could express all their potentials? However, in Mexico, the reality is very different. Out of every 1 of 2 girls, boys and adolescents, lives in vulnerable situations, where their well-being is compromised by poverty. Ten women and four girls and boys die daily victims of violence. What can we do to transform this reality?
In Mexico and other Latin American countries, both national and local governments have integrated socio-emotional education into their agenda as a strategy to prevent violence, reduce the inequality gap, improve academic performance and promote well-being. Mexico was a pioneer country in promoting Socio-emotional Education in young people aged 15 to 18 at the national level with the Construye-T Program. In 2017, it became the second country in the world to consider Socio-Emotional Education as a compulsory subject for girls, boys and adolescents in all basic education, by integrating this subject into its national curriculum, and defining achievement indicators per year and didactic guidelines for teachers.
Integrating Socio-Emotional Education explicitly into the national curriculum is crucial to ensure that girls, boys and adolescents have a comprehensive education. However, for Socio-Emotional Education to be implemented effectively in schools and classrooms, it is essential to have teachers and principals who appreciate the importance of knowing and regulating emotions, cultivating empathy, collaboration, and decision-making. Teachers need to know how to model these skills in their interactions with other people and who know how to effectively implement a Social-Emotional Education curriculum.
Various institutions in Mexico, such as AtentaMente, Colectivo Albanta, Universidad Iberoamericana, Women Network in Education (MuXEd), UNICEF, among other organizations, have collaborated closely with governments to promote the training of teachers and managers in SEL all over the country. AtentaMente has participated in the training of more than 600,000 teachers through face-to-face and online conferences, and has worked with more than 35,000 teachers in courses and workshops.
Now, it is of great importance to continue with the integration of SEL from a systemic point of view, which, in addition to the training of teaching and management personnel, incorporates communication strategies with families and other measures that allow planning, implementation, management strategies, and systems as evaluation for continuous improvement. Some states that are taking up this challenge in Mexico are Campeche, Sinaloa and Coahuila.
In Sinaloa, for example, a randomized trial of the Welness Education Program from AtentaMente program is being carried out with the support of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Coahuila, the government and private initiative have formed an alliance to promote the implementation of the Center for Healthy Minds Program in collaboration with local universities as Carolina University research programs as Research Schools International and Think Equal. Integrating Socioemotional Education into the school culture of a country like Mexico is not easy, but when there is synergy between the authorities, specialists in the field and citizens committed to betting on education, it is possible. As Eduardo Galeano said: "Many small people, in small places, doing small things, can change the world."
Emiliana Rodríguez is co-founder of AtentaMente, Chair of Mexico at Global Dignity and a member of the Karanga Advisory Council and the Network of Women United for Education (MuxEd). Her work focuses on the direction of curriculum development and teacher training projects, and on the link between scientific research and the pedagogical practice of socio-emotional education and ethics. She participated in the design of the national curriculum for Socio-Emotional Education and the Construye T Program; She is the co-author of 7 books on socio-emotional and ethical education, an international lecturer and consultant for organizations such as UNESCO MGIEP, the World Bank, among others.
References:
García, Ana Karen. (13 de febrero de 2021).Sólo en los primeros seis meses del 2020 fueron asesinadas 1,844 mujeres en México: Inegi. El Economista.
Rodríguez, E., Chernicoff, L., Barkovich, M., Jiménez, A., Labra, D. (2019) Educar desde el bienestar. Competencias socioemocionales para el aula y para la vida, Ciudad de México, México: Editorial Mc Graw Hill.
UNICEF, CONEVAL.(2014).Pobreza y derechos sociales de niñas, niños y adolescentes en México.
Socio-cognitive and socio-emotional learning: two parallels for the same sphere
by Harvey Sánchez Restrepo, Ph.d.
Producing and disseminating evidence on challenges in education has always been a subject of controversy and some authorities use to ignore this kind of knowledge, especially when they are associated with precariousness in childhood, perhaps because exposes the magnitude of the deprivation of multiple human rights. However, designing policies without evidence allows us to agree on superficial aspects and express that false sense of gain between loss and loss, especially because most of problems are concentrated in future generations and because, as Kundera (1965) has written, 'it is easy to find calm in the world of the imagination'.
During this period of pandemic, consciously or unconsciously, most of us have been developing new methods and paths of perception, interpretation and emotional stimulation, something that could be summarized as an adaptation process modulating our way of acquiring or losing new learnings. Of course, the growing alternatives of economic, social, cultural, and affective exchange, have multiplied the possibilities of accumulating experiences, interacting and learning with people and contexts outside the home. In this sense, the multiplicity of interactions has also created scenarios that have dismantled the situations of "emotional stability" that, in the case of students, used to be regulated by families, teachers and school communities.
Likewise, physical confinement has increased socio-emotional dispersion through multiple forms of ‘virtual hiking’. The dynamism of behavioral adaptations has also encouraged students to adopt multiple attitudes, and even personalities, which may not be compatible with their role and everyday contexts. In this sense, given that complexity increases with the number of possible interactions, and that risk increases with complexity, nowadays, educational policy makers face greater challenges to understand, diagnose and properly manage new risks, especially because they may be underestimating, or worst, hiding the relationships between the multiple adaptations to the current situation, and those tensions that might exist within families and school communities, especially in the most vulnerable students.
For example, recent results coming from Mexico’s educational system has found that 29% of students affirm that their learning in literacy was already very low before the pandemic, and 36% of them declares the same for Numeracy, a challenging enough percentage. However, now 1 in 2 secondary school students agree that their learning during the pandemic is low or very low, and more than 90% of them declare that, after the pandemic, the low quality of their learning will continue. Knowing the impact that expectations have on achievement levels (Hanushek, E., 2021), this situation provokes some crucial questions, among them: how can students regain confidence in the educational system and in themselves? To what extent are these statements related to reality? What will be the role of emotions for facing this situation?
Even more: it is mentioned in the same study that 68.8% of the students suffer more boredom, 55.3% are more worried, 49.1% suffer more sadness and anger, and 32.6% feel more fear than before the pandemic; while only 25.5% feel more motivated, 20.1% calmer and 19.4% more cheerful. Given these overwhelming numbers, can the catalog of educational priorities remain the same than before the pandemic context? Will it be possible to return to the classroom with the previous styles, practices, and objectives, ignoring these crucial edges for learning?
For more than a year, we have all suffered from adaptations stemming from an unprecedented number of recommendations that have impacted our chances of developing socio-cognitive (SCL) and socio-emotional (SEL) learning. However, in the educational field, it has been decided to postpone all those professional activities devoted to learning, favoring a precarious confinement that must be changed as soon as possible, given that no loss of skills is irrelevant, even if it goes unnoticed or is systematically ignored.
Therefore, to find effective and feasible solutions to undertake the return to the classroom, it is necessary to know the problems and risks that have been generated during this period, articulating SEL and SCL in parallel over the same educational sphere, and with the same level of importance. Recognizing in every moment that the change in our perception of reality not only has changed most of the questions and answers, but also the interpretation of past and new contexts, interactions and emotions.
Harvey Sánchez-Restrepo is the CEO of the Latin American Agency for Evaluation and Policy and member of the High-level Technical Advisory Board for UNESCO's Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education. He is the founder and former Executive director of the National Institute of Educational Evaluation of Ecuador and can be reached at Harvey@aleph.la
References
Kundera, M. (1967). The Joke, trans. Michael Henry Heim, Writers from the Other Europe Series (Harmondsworth, 1982), 26.
Hanushek, E., Kinne, L., Lergetporer, P., & Woessmann, L. (2021). Patience, risk-taking, and international differences in student achievement. Europe.
Thanks to everyone who joined us for May's SEL Leadership conversation. The recording is already in our YouTube channel. May's conversation was between education leaders Barbara Holzapfel (Vice President, Microsoft Education; Seattle, USA), Patricia Vazquez (Director of International Cooperation, Radix Education; Mexico City, Mexico) and Jigyasa Labroo (Co-Founder and CEO, Slam Out Loud; Delhi, India). They talked about how female leaders and female educator networks are influencing the implementation of SEL to improve learning for not only girls, but for all learners.
Events and Publications of Interest
#Aprendoencasa
On June 10th, Ana Maria Raad is organizing an event in LATAM to promote and reflect about the educational recovery strategies that should be implemented in the region. If you are interested please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BOcmkOyESGSoq8QMxbt2lA
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Many small people, in small places, doing small things, can change the world.”
Karanga is an alliance of individuals and organizations committed to advocating for and supporting social and emotional learning programs within formal and non-formal education. Our vision is of a thriving world where all learners are enabled with the skills to succeed in school, work, and life.
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